Ethereum Transaction Fees To Decrease!

Ethereum is working on 'smart accounts' aimed at reducing high transaction fees on layer 2 networks.

The Ethereum Foundation is preparing for significant changes in the Ethereum account abstraction standard, particularly to reduce transaction fees on layer 2 solutions.

According to information shared by the Ethereum Foundation on January 10, plans for radical changes in the ERC-4337 standard, also known as smart accounts or account abstraction, have emerged.

As per the update shared by developer John Rising, the new version 0.7 will leverage the experiences gained from nine months of ERC-4337 usage.

The most substantial change will occur in the structure of account abstraction operations, which are more complex than regular Ethereum transactions. Now, users will need to specify five transaction fee values instead of just one.

Rising stated, "Users will have to specify multiple values, taking into account the fact that they can perform calculations when verifying the signature of an account."

Rising explained why additional values are needed:

"With smart accounts, users can have many different signature types and can pay the transaction fee in many ways. This means that the required fee amount will vary, and the user needs to specify how much they want to spend to verify this transaction."

These changes will reduce the amount of data required, especially improving transaction fee predictions on layer 2 networks and lowering transaction fees.

Rising mentioned, "The biggest benefit of v0.7 for users will be the reduction in transaction fees. Some techniques will be used to more efficiently utilize transaction data, which will be particularly beneficial for layer 2 blockchains."

The new changes will impose a penalty of 10 for all unused fees during the transaction, preventing applications from unnecessarily transacting with high limits.

Account abstraction, also known as "smart accounts," allows accounts to have programmable logic and rules, enabling them to be built on top of basic Ethereum accounts and unlocking many new use cases not possible with simple accounts.

Present-day Ethereum accounts are passive and static, but account abstraction aims to make these accounts active and programmable. EIP-4337 was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and other developers in September 2021.

Although the Ethereum Foundation has not disclosed the expected release date for version 0.7, it indicated that security audits have commenced.

Developer John Rising mentioned, "I estimate that everything will be concluded by the end of February, facilitated by the ETH Denver event."